Comic Book Resources

Robot reviews: Another kids' comics round-up

Nancy Vol. 1

Nancy Vol. One
by John Stanley
Drawn and Quarterly, 128 pages, $24.95.

When faced with the challenge of adapting Ernie Bushmiller's classic comic strip to longer comic book format, John Stanley's response was simple and economical: Turn her into Little Lulu.

That's the only conclusion I can come to after reading this collection of stories in D&Q's ongoing "John Stanley Library" project. Nancy is pretty much Lulu with frizzier hair, Sluggo is a thinner and slightly more benign Tubby. There's even a snotty rich kid and bratty little boy similar to Wilbur and Alvin. Stanley even repeats one of his Tubby stories involving a burglar almost note for note.

That doesn't make Nancy a bad book by any stretch of the imagination. Mediocre Stanley is still miles above most people's best work. The best stories here though are the ones involving Oona Goosepimple, an odd, Wednesday Addams-type girl who supernatural antics cause no end of anxiety for poor Nancy. It's those stories where Stanley -- freed of the Bushmiller formula -- really gets inventive and inspired. If the ratio of Oona stories increases as the volumes do, then I'll keep buying these books as long as D&Q are able to get them out.

Reviews of Moomin, Amulet and more can be found after the jump ...

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Straight for the art | Cuaderno de Frases Encontradas

From Berrio's 'Conversations'

Even if you can't read Spanish (and I totally can't) this sketchblog by Juan Berrio, based on snatches of overheard conversations is still worth checking out. (via)

Straight for the art | Allan Sanders' superheroes

Sanders' Superheroes

Get your weekend off to the right start by checking out this collage of superheroes by illustrator and animator Allan Sanders. (via)

Memento mori: An interview with Eddie Campbell

Sometime soon (hopefully next week) Diamond will be releasing Eddie Campbell's Alec: The Years Have Pants to a comic book store near you. In a year chock full of great, original work and important re-releases and rediscoveries, this has to be one of the most important books of 2009. I know that statement might come off to some as shallow hyperbole, but it's a risk worth taking.

For the the unfamiliar, Pants collects all of Campbell's autobiographical Alec stories (except for The Fate of the Artist, which was published by First Second) in one big (hardcover or softcover) volume. Since the early 1980s, the artist and writer has been chronicling his life's adventures through his barely disguised alter ego, starting as a feckless young man in the King Canute Crowd to the successful cartoonist and family man in After the Snooter. It's saying something to call these stories his most significant and stellar work, considering he also collaborated with Alan Moore on From Hell and created the elegant Bacchus series. One hopes this new collection (and the new material found therein) provides the opportunity for a re-examination and analysis of this impressive body of work.

I had the opportunity to talk with Campbell late last August over email about the book. This was my second time talking to him and he proved to be as gracious and thoughtful over the computer as the phone, if not more so.

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Send Us Your Shelf Porn!

Is it time for Shelf Porn once again? You bet your sweet bippy it is! And we've got a heck of a collection to share with you this week, from Caren Pilgrim, who runs the Peanuts Collectibles Web site. As you might imagine, she has quite the Peanuts-inspired collection herself.

Upon coming across her Web site, I emailed Caren and asked if she would be willing to share some photos of her collection with Robot 6 readers. Here's what she sent in ...

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Robot reviews: Another manga round-up

Ooku Vol. 1

Ooku: The Inner Chambers
by Fumi Yoshinaga
Viz, $12.99.

As story hooks go, Ooku's got a great one: A strange plague during the Edo period of Japan kills off more than three-quarters of the country's male population. As a result, the culture and gender relations end up going all topsy-turvy, and succeeding generations find the women ruling the roost and men being protected and prized for their ability to produce offspring. This is especially in the Shogun's harem, or Inner Chambers, where the story takes place.

It helps that the story is by Fumi Yoshinaga, who, in books like Antique Bakery and Gerald and Jacques, has proven herself to be more interested in gender relations and identity issues than mere yaoi squickiness (although she certainly likes that too. Certainly the fact that Ooku won the Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize in its home country has led to a certain amount of anticipation among some manga fans.

Unfortunately, while Yoshinaga remains an excellent and expressive artist, the series stumbles out of the gate. One of the main problems is the translator's decision (no doubt motivated by an attempt to approximate a certain Japanese dialect) to have everyone speak in a formal, Renaissance Faire-like manner, with lots of "thees" and "thous" and "didsts." It has the unintended effect of coming off as forced, and distancing the reader from the characters and the story.

Beyond that though, Yoshinaga doesn't really seem to do much with her idea, at least so far. She seems more interested in conveying the various back room politics and romances that take place in the inner chambers than giving thought as to what such a huge change in the population would do to a culture. Would the fashion still be identical to what it was in the real world, with men shaving their heads and women wearing long gowns? Wouldn't that change somewhat drastically? Would a female shogun really keep a male harem and if so, would it be so identical in structure to what the real Edo shoguns had? This may sound like nit-picking, but makes the story seem more than a bit facile, as though she just swapped everyone's sex and that alone would be interesting enough. It may well be that I'm not giving Yoshinaga enough credit and that she's actually considered these issues and will explore them in more depth in future volumes. But so far, I'm not encouraged.

Reviews of Red Snow, Pelu and more after the jump ...

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Thin wallets, fat bookshelves: A publishing news round-up

Polly and Her Pals

• IDW announced over the weekend that it will be collecting the Sunday strips from the Cliff Sterrett classic Polly and Her Pals. The first volume, encapsulating 1925-27, will be in stores this coming August.

The strip began in 1912, but it was in the 20s that Sterrett's art really took off. Influenced by the modernist art movements, he started incorporating abstract and surrealists motifs into his Sunday pages, and many historians and critics have compared this period favorably to strips like Krazy Kat.

Kitchen Sink attempted to publish these strips back in the 90s before going under but they were only able to get two volumes out the door. Having managed to find those books in a back issue bin years ago and devoured them several times since then, let me say this is fabulous news and I'm really looking forward to seeing this release.

• IDW also posted about their intention to publish a four-issue mini-series about the Weekly World News' Bat Boy, which I imagine will be quite different from Polly and Her Pals.

• Writer Clifford Meth reports on his blog that Marvel will be publishing The Invincible Gene Colan in February 2010. The 128 page book will feature art work by the master as well as appreciations by folks like Stan Lee, Marv Wolfman and John Romita Sr.

• Apparently Erik Larsen (and his Savage Dragon) is featured in the latest edition of McSweeney's newspaper. That's kinda cool.

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Charles Schulz gives 'em the ax

The ax

While Peanuts creator Charles Schulz was certainly known as a all-around wonderful, decent guy, there's no doubt he had a mischievous, smart-aleck side to him as well. Consider for instance this letter, recently donated to the Library of Congress.

In the letter, written in 1954, Schulz addresses a Ms. Elizabeth Swaim, who had recently written the cartoonist to express her distaste for the then new Charlotte Braun character, a loudmouth Charlie Brown lookalike that Swaim was not alone in disliking.

Schulz tells Swaim that he is taking her advice and getting rid of the character, but then reminds her, "Remember that you and your friends will have the death of an innocent child on your conscience! Are you prepared to accept such a responsibility?"

And, in the interest of driving his point home, he draws a picture of Charlotte Braun with an ax in her head. Wonder why that never made it into any of his "Happiness is ..." books?

(via)

The best reason to visit Nappanee, IN

Smokey Stover's automobile

... is to see Smokey Stover's car, apparently built by creator Bill Homan hisself.

Congratulations Adrian Tomine!

Awwww.

The Drawn and Quarterly blog announced yesterday that the Optic Nerve cartoonist and his wife, Sarah Brennan, recently welcomed into the world a baby girl, Nora Emiko Tomine. We here at Robot 6 say congratulations to the new parents and wish them the best of luck.

Straight for the art | Melvin Monster covers

Melvin Monster

Frustrated that Drawn and Quarterly's John Stanley Library of books doesn't include the covers to the original comic books? D&Q feels your pain (sort of) and has posted the covers to the stories from the forthcoming, second Melvin Monster book on their blog.

And if that's not enough to satisfy you, they've also got a swell Nancy story.

Put your money where your comics are (or something like that)

It's Storm, but in wallet form

Now that we've officially turned the corner on Halloween, it's time to start thinking about holiday shopping. No, don't make that face, I'm being serious.

And if you're shopping for that special comic book aficionado in your life and not sure what to get them, why not consider a wallet? More precise, a Comic Wallet. Albert Doan, of Calgary, Canada, turns old (and some new) comic books and turns them into laminated, reinforced wallet, which he then sells on his site for about $20-$30 a pop. He's even got a series of Blackest Night wallets available, if you just can't get enough DC zombies. He also handles special requests, so if you've been anxiously craving to certain sequences from say, Faust, folded up and stuffed in your back pocket, now's your chance. Myself, I'm holding out for a Little Lulu set.

Wall-to-wall Ware

How much Corrigan can you stand?

The Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture at the University of Tennessee has a new exhibit up entitled "MultipleXMultiple: A Survey of Contemporary Printmaking." The interesting (and comics-related) thing about this show is they're highlighting the work of Chris Ware by displaying every page from every issue of Acme Novelty Library so far on a wall. One of the student curators, Daniel Maw, has pictures of the installation on his blog, and talks about the idea behind the show over at Flog:

In order to showcase the epic nature of this comic we elected to purchase two copies, cut the bindings off each, collate the pages, and display all [390] pages in a grid on a 23 x 10 foot wall. It is quite impressive to take it all in at once as it demonstrates the tremendous amount of talent and work that went in to the creation of the book.

Things to do: 'Political Cartooning in NYC' on Nov. 3

Bill Kartalopoulos emailed me to let everyone know about a panel he'll be moderating tomorrow, Nov. 3, at the The New York Center for Independent Publishing, 20 W. 44th St., New York.

The panel will discuss the history and current challenges facing political cartoonists in The Big Apple and features Eric Drooker, Tom Hart, Tim Kreider and Peter Kuper.The full press release is below the jump.

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What Are You Reading?

Blood's A Rover

Welcome to What Are You Reading. I hope everyone had a nice Halloween and spent at least part of it reading comics.

Our guest this week is Chip Mosher, Marketing Director at Boom! Studios, publisher of such fine books as Irredeemable and The Muppet Show. As the image above hints, Chip's been reading some rather interesting (and gritty) material, so click on the link below to discover what he and the rest of Robot 6 have been reading recently. Oh, and don't forget to let us know what you have been reading in the comments section.

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